Language, Absence, and Narrative Impossibility in Mario Vargas Llosa's "El Hablador" Author(s): Julianne Newmark Source: Latin

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LANGUAGE, ABSENCE, AND NARRATIVE IMPOSSIBILITY INMARIO VARGAS LLOSA'S EL HABLADOR

JULIANNENEWMARK

InEl hablador, published in 1987,Mario Vargas Llosa considers

the absences potential models. Llosa that emerge of of between oral and written these is but often one of discourses opposing the many and the impossibility The binary reconciling oral/written narrative binary

oppositions

introduced by Vargas Llosa is El hablador. What Vargas

an (imagined) iswhether oral story can be written, and investigates if it cannot be, what falls out of the story, the narrative, in the negotiation of this space between written and oral story-making: El hablador figures as a written textual

on a culture of orality for itsmomentum. text dependent This not is contradiction reconciled implicit perhaps by entirely but in writing the novel he introduces the duplicitous Llosa, Vargas or oral form. If storytelling nature of storytelling?in written is (or has been made), as Walter is Vargas Llosa obsolete, suggests, Benjamin an to of the of stories pose investigation attempting telling impossibility in amodern(ist) Is this an impossibility moment? that forces the literary so. Vargas to emerge? Perhaps Llosa's narrator, a scholar postmodern Romantic

with

a and modernist sets himself tendencies, predilections the story of aMachiguenga Indian storyteller?he goal of reconstituting to he hopes to do so in a somehow the and possess hopes unpossessable to write. Eventually he has, for many novel which years, been unable Llosa's amythic narrator succeeds invoking Machiguenga to be a recasting of his own one "oral" spersed narratives, strate the narrative contrivance to reconcile the binary his Machiguenga a storyteller, storyteller who friend Sa?l Zuratas. long-lost and one written, of Vargas Llosa' written and of El hablador s narrator. oral in writing text by is revealed The inter demon

Vargas

between

This narrator, has storytelling,

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Latin

American

Literary

Review

the mythic and mysterious thus the of his friend and storyteller, co-opting Machiguenga passion serves to text. to satiate the it The Zuratas also his using propel imagined reimagined absent narrator's desire to know Yet, by invoking of the Machiguenga, discourse?written inwriting a pseudo-Zuratas a tribe that has for so long eluded him. to tell his story (an imagined Zuratas) conflict the narrator's Each emerges. primary

his

friend

Zuratas

as

in retaining its own autonomy and oral?persists cannot cannot mix mix with and written with oral) and the written, (oral text remains fractured between oral and written. The narrative strategies in opposite to emerge, most absences causing significant in the textual between (or visibly) chapters. These separations serve as the spaces in which the irreconcilable of problems directions

pull

notably absences binaries

to create a joint between written remain. Despite and attempts in fails. of the The this articulation narrator, effect, oral, failure, however, success in creating a narrative veritably in demonstrates Vargas Llosa's shambles in conveying that ultimately that succeeds coheres, essence of Vargas Llosa's narrator's failure, however, a "story." is this?he

The create

can no more

form a hybrid method than he can of storytelling effectively a true hybrid "Civilized" or Western standards) Machiguenga (by a culturally-acceptable the impossibility of resolu "marginal." Perhaps tion, and the persistence of the absence, is, after all, the only truth of this

narrative.

The which

narrator

of El hablador stories

two concurrent

figures as a curious conduit through flow. One trajectory of the narrative relates

the story of the narrator's friend Saul Zuratas. This tale of Machiguenga these two narrative not only

own professional life and relationship with his narrative alternates with a rather fragmentary Indian cosmogony and lore. Vargas Llosa weaves of the text lies together, yet the complication focus. More problematic than the seeming

strains

in this dual narrative

incompatibility of the narratives is the ethical (and literary) orientation

as the director of the each narrative strain. The narrator, informing owns is in many its language this ownership narrative, respects. Yet nature of the undermined the by completely foreign Machiguenga to such a degree that they can be and culture. To posses words language a certain assimilation in written with a cultural recorded signs indicates master-narrative. placement of To record a culture's words This as one's own denotes (either in which the as a the lan and the writer as a participant in the culture is the manner the words

or antipathetic participant). sympathetic narrator of El hablador is situated. He culture guage), only

can record

of another

of an imagined (or appropriation through translation these into his own cultural somehow words bringing only by

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Absence, Language, Mario Llosa's Vargas

and Narrative El hablador

Impossibility

in

of language here. Yet, there is no complete ownership as told by an the to reconstitute narrative, Machiguenga By attempting narrator devises the elusive Zuratas), (the imagined/projected storyteller literary horizon. an otherwise He narrative. uncontrollable to finally control and their and the rituals, only by the storytelling Machiguenga imagines can a semi as filters of his cultural assumptions these tales of projection a way linear narrative The narrator sense toWestern(ized) readers. emerge which makes about Zuratas or the cannot fully abandon his assumptions cannot absorb their lan in order to tell their story?he Zuratas,

Machiguenga guage as his own.

(and as depicted by the narrator), similarly as his own?he the Machiguenga cannot language fully appropriate to amother to the language as one belongs cannot belong (to paraphrase man can either neither Hence, fully posses language, Jacques Derrida). or of between these narratives and what in written form, emerges orally impossibility this absence and is a dense is the refuse that control Llosa' exists in in the text. What absence and pervasive that cannot be written of language?the words be spoken. The narrator, in effect, can

the words

cannot

ultimately Vargas which

neither.

s text is the telling of a story, and in terms of the events can be revealed in a designs Vargas Llosa's propel manner. not the "real" A unlike narrator, relatively straightforward of the is consumed Llosa himself, by a thirst for knowledge Vargas the narrative, Peruvian wander a tribe of native people who live in (or in Southeastern Peru. This river valley After same tribe also fascinated friend Zuratas. the narrator's college a in narrator the lost touch with Zuratas, retaining persists having like the interest in the Machiguenga. Zuratas, suspended periodically Indians, Machiguenga the Urubamba through)

in the narrator's mind, although is also always somewhere Machiguenga, out for of have been touch many years. The narrator resists linearity they as Zuratas it is problematized from the onset; by the discord within which by the narrator (conversations in in college). The two men were interested this passion was almost desper however for Zuratas the Machiguenga, ate; he was fascinated storytellers, independent men by theMachiguenga to the people while of the culture who told the history concurrently related in conversations while recorded occurred the two were as the repositories then managed storytellers serving the tribe?they Peruvian mark were of all tribal lore and gossip. The Machiguenga for to exist in a position of absolute necessity as focal points of the culture. Serving the veritable was affiliation ostracized (Judaism). due to a disfiguring birth The narrator that implies

Westernized such a focal point was an impossibility for Zuratas in the

"mainstream"?he religious and his

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Latin

American

Literary

Review

these it was himself.

two factors

limit the realms that compelled

in which

Zuratas

could

this alienation

Zuratas

to create

was (as imagined This "new" space, ultimately, that of aMachiguenga storyteller. The narrator reveals that Zuratas, otherwise known for the tribal Indians"

operate. Thus, a new space for by the narrator) as Mascarita to the to love

(little mask) due to his disfiguring facial birthmark, felt a "love at first
sight Machiguenga them as he feels is motivated attraction (28). Zuratas's passionate a distinct love for them. He wants by

to be loved. Concurrently, he feels that they deserve can narrator the love that Zuratas's affiliation him\ perhaps suggests they was born out of his own the Machiguenga with "Had he marginality:

with identified those marginal of the because unconsciously beings birthmark that made him, too, a marginal went out he time being, every on the streets?" (28). If the answer to this is proposed question "yes," the motivation for Zuratas's exile from civilization would be straightfor an ward. Yet the narrator can never become to "answer" and it is privy plausible that Zuratas's Machiguenga mon. If there of kinship the with feeling com than in held any marginality complex is "marginality," there is an established, while delimited, are far more reasons for his

space of existence?a space, albeit, on the outside of the "acceptable." For Zuratas, there really was not a plausible there space of marginality, was only a dense, pervasive absence. He refuses to accept being relegated to a position of marginality this would because the notion that foreground a certain cultural text while he is forced to there is a space that is within a radical dislocation exist in its margins. for (of) Rather, Zuratas chooses to remove himself chooses himself?he from a culture that relies upon the use of lines of separation the margins). This is a (lines demarcating self-removal. While much of the story of Zuratas in El proactive hablador indeed existence "draw
drawn.

is conjecture,

what he has

the narrator out draws

does of

know

is that Zuratas and all these

has

"gone away"; opted in a society that forcibly matters lines"?what is where to "make sense"

a stultifying lines. Indeed, immutably

tortured societies lines are

and how

In order narrator creates

of the absence

a narrative

to explain

the reasons

of his college friend, the for his disappearance

The Machiguenga fit well into this narrative (his "marginality"). expla nation. For the narrator to reconcile to the unanswerable himself aspects of the mysterious culture and to the disappearance of Machiguenga Zuratas, that itmust be Zuratas whom he sees in a picture a a Machiguenga in in The Firenze. of is gallery hanging picture narrator to the for and have narrative, this focal figure must storyteller, he "decides"

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Absence, Language, Llosa's Mario Vargas

and Narrative El hablador

Impossibility

in

the has joined that Zuratas the narrator "realizes" Hence, as a that tribe (a reality emerges piece by piece storyteller Machiguenga and certain significant over the course of the narrative), emerge questions one is not a culture of which within of assimilation about the possibility be Zuratas. into "civilized" a part by birth. While Zuratas was not ever absorbed even a with the certain kinship culture and felt Peruvian Machiguenga before he joined them as they "walked," Vargas Llosa allows his narrator accultur of Zuratas's to remain partially unconvinced ability to become ated toMachiguenga and his Machiguenga of Zuratas in the glitches what The life entirely. The narrator text, and this uncertainty remains unsure of himself via a rendering emerges This discordance is revealed cosmology?Zuratas reveals that it is

as the Machiguenga storyteller. of Zuratas's telling of Machiguenga

cannot help but infuse theMachiguenga

lore with his own insight into

The narrator is "wrong." is "right" and what if a child to custom commit infanticide Machiguenga imagined it must be reiterated of Zuratas's about Zuratas weaves that

in born imperfect. a critique of this practice into his tales. Yet, of Zuratas's tales to the this rendering

Machiguenga
conceives a way to write

tribespeople is delivered by the narrator?this

is how he

role as a storyteller. The narrator has finally found and conjuring up an image of his the Machiguenga, with his parrot in is the only way shoulder, tale. his Machiguenga compose to write his both about college attempt quite been able to mentally there is always something just his friend the text concerning on his

lost friend Zuratas, which the narrator The friend posses. beyond Zuratas to force cannot text traces and to write

can effectively the narrator's about

a tribe he has never

As Sara Castro-Klar?n

has argued, the reach of the narrator who writes

He cannot and theMachiguenga. creates a unity he peremptorily but

envision

a totality, and in trying for events which explanations

to Castro-Klar?n, "The slip through his fingers. According that the ethnographer's novel's will plot the notion [the polyglossia its truth his desire and of that simulacrum but is the discourse narrator's] status crafts" effect, jumped. sense), never is no different from that of the fiction a narrative (47). The narrator needs into which is afraid of the absence In order tomake the narrator creates simultaneously line to grasp hold of; he, in his friend Zuratas seems to have the novelist

sense of this leap of faith (in the Kierkegaardian a complex a history, that tribal cosmogony, in which represents sense in making he it. This is a

of something him civilized of his the Western, scope reasoning. While beyond completely of the "leap," of the circumstances the narrator cannot fully conceive that he has Zuratas of information the few regarding pieces despite

truly existed simulacral history

in the way to aid used

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10

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gathered "whole"

from

friends

narrative.

tory and satisfying Castro-Klar?n priation:

he can attempt to craft a resources, a than whole explana Yet, rather effectively creating the narrator cannot help but craft a narrative narrative, and other has also confronted has appropriated the issue of the narrator's Zuratas's most personal appro desire

that is full of significant holes.

"[the narrator]

andmade it his own" (211). Zuratas did indeed hope to fully understand
culture, Machiguenga narrator turns Zuratas and this is the trait that the narrator adopts. The into an answer, his answer. The fictive Zuratas, the Zuratas who the Machiguenga becomes in the storyteller captured gallery picture, was created by the narrator. This aspect of the text poses a problem for Castro-Klar?n, for she believes that this potentially allows

for the fictionality of the rendering of the plight of theMachiguenga

weaken

to

the actual political narrative commen gravity of the overarching Castro-Klar?n "That to make of has decided [the narrator] tary. argues: the man in the photograph seem to remove the figure of Zuratas would

the consequences of the novel's discourse from the realm of history and claim for it a purely fictional, status" (221). Even if this is so, fabricated Castro-Klar?n insists that the deeper "cultural problems" and however, related commentary remain resonant despite the fictional aspects of the text. By removing the "truth" (the socio-political "truths" of the day-to further and further from the day lives of Peru's real indigenous peoples) is asserting that there are no truths that are reader, perhaps Vargas Llosa These "answers," in self-disclosing. again, emerge only in the absences the text, in the spaces, or "holes," between the inlaid narrative schemes. It is in these spaces where one might hear some semblance of a language of truth. Hence, that there exists a kind of truth in by latently suggesting orality (the culture of the Machiguenga), Vargas Llosa claims that there even is a truth which lies the grasp of his narrator who attempts beyond to force an oral narrative into the parameters of aWestern, (and culture) written narrative structure (the novel the narrator attempts to write) and civilization. since the narrative of the Machiguenga is filtered Hence, through the narrator, and thus its "truth" is obscured, the reader never sees the "real" Zuratas or the "real" Machiguenga there may not (although while

have been a historical Saul Zuratas there is indeed a tribe of Indians called
is not his own, yet in the narrator's as a resonant aspects rendering storyteller many are addressed. of language and ownership By infusing the Machiguenga the projected Zuratas demon history with aspects of his own history, strates that one cannot ever truly "belong." Zuratas cannot to his belong Zuratas's voice of Zuratas's existence the Machiguenga).

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Absence, Language, Mario Llosa' Vargas

and Narrative s El hablador

Impossibility

in

11

or Jews) or to his adopted Machiguenga own people tribe; the (Peruvians cultural forces are internecine and illuminate the unreality of the "hablador" Zuratas has argued, "[Zuratas's] belief in leaving the Indians alone is contradicted by the praxis of the s last text. By becoming an hablador he already transgresses hablador' his himself. and by his use of intertextuality he betrays his theory of nonintervention, This intent of preserving theMachiguenga culture..." (139). intertextuality cannot abandon is of paramount Zuratas the influence of importance; various even literary (Kafka, for one) in his role as an hablador. and cultural/religious (Jewish) texts, As Maria Isabel Acosta Cruz

In one of the stories as he walks, he includes Samsa of Kafka's Gregor "cultured"

the narrator's

projected Zuratas tells to the tribe to a favorite reference literary figure of his, The Metamorphosis felt (the "real" Zuratas

that this figure was especially applicable to the realities of his life in
a story of a "buzz introduces Peru). The hablador Zuratas I was buzz bug" thus: "A Gregor-Tasurinchi. lying on my back. The to me. world had grown bigger, it seemed I was aware of everything. Those hairy-ringed legs were my legs" (203). He is, concurrently, Gregor Franz Samsa and Kafka and Sa?l Zuratas and the hablador; he shares with Kafka a feeling the unshakable of alienation anxiety caused due to his ancestral religion, presence, Zuratas by his physical the hablador the and Judaism, an anxiety he cannot avoid

feels imbues his whole being, his whole

with whom he walks, Machiguenga text oral the with markers infusing out

spirit. In this tale he tells the

a tale of hybridity. He tells spins of cultural Tasurinchi." This conflation

able barrier; it exhibits the potential or acceptance to "join" the tribe, in In allowing Zuratas (in any culture). in the whatever do, effect, (for Zuratas/ Machiguenga change capacity, one important marker due to Zuratas) and do demonstrate of cultural to survival: feature Zuratas neutralize in (the very adaptability hoped it must be noted that the impossibility of Zuratas's total them). Yet,

fully escape; he a "Gregor tale of being an impass connotes signifiers of complete assimilation impossibility

of a life he cannot

assimilation (and absorption into an ideally static culture) is evident only

in the reconstituted is a projection tale as told by the imagined Zuratas, the Zuratas who of all of the narrator's beliefs and concerns about both the

and his long-lost friend. M. Keith Booker puts it concisely: Machiguenga ...we must in that neither Vargas Llosa nor his mind keep narrator could have possibly modern had direct access to Saul's stories to the Machiguengas. the hablador Thus, at all but are in chapters are not really Saul's narrations as narrator created the Western fact simulations by

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12

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projections

of

his

own

notions

of Machiguenga

storytelling. (131)
For the narrator, there was no logical way for Saul to entirely abandon the Peruvian and the intertextuality influences that of "civilized" culture, or transcribed in the that the accounts, "stories," emerges suggests narrator "civilized" is aware of impulse. The narrator the eclipsing of the forces of power an cannot Such be extracted impulse does create a Zuratas who the modern from one's

identity. the "real" Zuratas Booker storyteller argues,

of his college years, but "the modern narrator's Romantic in some

in some ways resembles this hablador Zuratas is, as a of what fantasy time when narration still

ideal past for the of experience" conveyance (131). provided are densely tales of mythology and cosmogony Such reconstituted like to believe would saturated with the narrator's own fantasies?he (as that there was a time when the art of oral storytelling Benjamin suggests) was a necessary in El hablador, facet of communal coherence. Yet, no ever becomes text in "real evidence the that Saul Llosa Vargas gives 131). (Booker The reader is never privy to the "real" gap emerges. is always a shadowy of Saul Zuratas. Zuratas figure, a valiant protector who boldly smiles in the face of those who the besieged Machiguenga is idealized insult him and sneer (or laugh) at his birthmark. This Zuratas Here another he is ineffectual. by the narrator, but nonetheless, he cannot be separated from his cultural ties?he the scarred Talara" child of a Jewish father and amother above, is, and will always be, who was a "Creole from As mentioned an hablador at all"

have been might an effective means

in the Jewish community (10). His mother was never accepted this in Lima; she was exoticized by her ancestry. Her son Saul leverages inborn exoticism, and religious, into a life quest for both physical becomes a man, as the narrator presents him, whose belief

himself?he

in the integrity and importance of theMachiguenga eclipsed all other aspects of his life (including these aspects of heredity). This is how the
narrator many when remembers Zuratas and how respects, Zuratas is unassailable?the he displays him to the reader. In narrator protects him even

internal critiques of him into the narrative. At the onset of weaving the narrator relates that he was indeed friends with Zuratas, El hablador, to be friends with an archangel" but only "insofar as it is possible (8). was of Zuratas always dislocated, always dispossessed unapproachable, not He could and espouse any fully nationality. popular family, language, cause was and became devoted and an even more committed curious figure to the narrator. Zuratas to the cause of the Machiguenga?this

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Absence, Language, Llosa's Mario Vargas

and Narrative El hablador

Impossibility

in

13

to the narrator, "transformed cause, according Zuratas, erasing all other concerns from his mind and turning him into aman with amission" (21). as far as can be known, is to serve as a representative Zuratas's mission, To serve as such a representative he must join them. for the "marginal." as a writer of tales, the narrator creates a Hence, through his agency the "marginalized" Zuratas of his own memory textual space in which can join the Machiguenga and can walk amongst them as their hablador. It is true that Zuratas never disclosed he felt such sympathy for why the Machiguenga, but the reasons for this can be easily approximated. there remains However, something, again, unutterable. We never hear we never see are removed Zuratas's the voice; Machiguenga?they by a series Knight or even perversions. As Jean O'Bryan dislocations, consists of three embedded each narratives, claims, El hablador as a gateway to Knight, to the next. According these coexistent of narrative form three the second levels": the first is the level of "diegetic is the level of memories "of Mascarita and level is "the hablador's stories" (77). on different the the "We

serving narratives narrator;

levels," says Knight, diegetic of which of the first" (78). Indeed, "the second is the creation the to the reader is the creation of the Mascarita/Zuratas figure presented originary narrator while Llosa). Yet, exist within There is a creation of Vargas remember, (who, we must are decidedly the three narratives and codependent one another, a there is kind of dividing line between them.

and habladores," have two different

the third narrators

is a border, and this border can be read as the separation between text. This chapter-border the chapters of Vargas is indeed a Llosa's an which reinforces the impos unmistakable one, (visible) one, physical or oral into written, vice-versa. this obvious Yet, sibility of melting border a series of limits. If one of "borders," or one fall into an absence limit, may transgresses headlong or abyss. Perhaps this is the function of the overt physicality of these serve as between situated separations chapters. They literary guardrails on the edge of the void that emerges between narratives. these covalent is merely this border narratives to each other yet they cannot depend on their proximity on existence the break between them?the depends of the text. Their these as the incommensurability be ruptures be explained and spoken word or as the incompatibility between the These (the "real" and the "projected")? ruptures perhaps one of a series

These

be mixed.

rupture Can tween also

the written

two narrators emerge

due to the impossibility of reconciliation between pagan, or even and between monotheistic dominated and models, pantheistic, on both sides of the dyads that dominant is exoticised entities. Zuratas

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14

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indelible being his part-Je wish, part-Creole him, the most parent contains age. Zuratas forces; conflicting (as the they form his "self narrator would have it)?the mark(ing)s of these cultural/religious facets of his identity are insurmountable, ever irreversible, perpetuated by the as a culture-bearer of Zuratas conflicted very continuance (whatever kind of culture-bearer he may be). The turbulence and irreconcilability define

of these binary pairings almost thwart any potential continuity in El

Llosa manages to reconcile his narra hablador, yet somehow Vargas tive?at least on a functional level. One aspect that remains problematic, is the dangling location of language. however, is a negotiation There the Machiguenga between and the language that Vargas to relate by including Llosa manages a Spanish language of Machiguenga smattering certain kind of exoticism the Machiguenga/Zuratas admixture reader culture. unlocatable of Machiguenga a certain to perceive words to emerge, storyline. words realism in the text. These further Yet words enable from this the a distancing the purpose of including and Spanish words is to allow the reader

and their language is peppered with are "recorded" by the narrator and a coherence thus gain some semblance of coherence, that further high nature the of written lights clarifying language. By simplifying language, text serves as a distilling written can be read and mechanism. Words identifiers. These words reread on the page, but still they may not be fully understood because they are taken out of the context of the culture from which they come. a believable or lexical pattern, Creating Machiguenga language, was certainly a narrative hurdle for Vargas Llosa (only some of the words he includes are "real" Machiguenga As Castro-Klar?n notes, words). the parameters of the Machiguenga Delineating no act is the greatest doubt thus far speech challenge faced by Vargas art of representation, Llosa's for the Machiguenga not be readily world that his encapsulated in can engages storyteller reason or the within the logic

reader?their

The Machiguenga words is syntax bewildering

in the orality of the Machiguenga no sense to an uninitiated make

of the absurd known to the West.

Hence,

(212)

Llosa allows his narrator to attempt to derive a way to Vargas to the reader. For the narrator, the the Machiguenga of represent project written invention was the only way he could hope to understand Zuratas and "since the Machiguenga. I have given "I must invent," claims in to the cursed temptation the unnamed of writing narrator, about him

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Absence, Language, Mario Llosa' Vargas

and Narrative s El hablador

Impossibility

in

15

invents is a hybrid representa [Zuratas]" (35). And what he ultimately a is both Western and Machiguenga; tional object?a Zuratas who to subvert the forces of Western in Zuratas who struggles logocentrism appropriates and their importance highlights Machiguenga Zuratas into their culture more plausible. to aid in sustaining the narrator project, order the integrity of theMachiguenga certain "truths" to make culture. In this the of regarding the inclusion

inEl The Machiguenga culture and theMachiguenga lore presented are not accurate of the "real" Machiguenga hablador representations

Indians who lived (and still live) in Southeastern Peru. Efrain Kristal
makes this point explicit. According to Kristal,

[El hablador] of portrayal mutes Peruvian point

is not, nor does it pretend to be, an accurate trans the Machiguengas... Llosa Vargas information about the Machiguengas and the academic scene in order to establish who a counter two groups of people are culturally

between

isolated from each other. (158)

on "fictionalized Vargas Llosa offers a novel dependent anthropological creates a Machiguenga material" cultural Llosa, then, (159). Vargas to suit his There is another which textual gap emerges identity designs. here?between the "real" Machiguenga and the representation of them

offered inEl hablador. Kristal explains:

a stylized and narra [Vargas Llosa] develops language a a native like mode reads from tive that translation form and content suggest a non-West language whose ern perception of time and space. Vargas Llosa drew on from and works the anthropological linguistic

Machiguenga
Hence, the Machiguenga

but did not follow them strictly. (164)

Indians discussed in the linear, or Western, an are an of culture. This adaptation chapters adaptation already existing an states that "Vargas Llosa' s is really inmany respects. Kristal inversion are a nomadic live in scattered communities Machiguenga people who in the Amazon Machiguenga Vargas Llosa to the anthropological literature the jungle. According are a stationary people" (167). To suit his textual designs, to create a fictional material anthropological manipulates

tribe who, ultimately, resemble their actual counterpart. only vaguely serve as to narrator Llosa allows his his The narrator, Vargas mouthpiece.

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16

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for the creation of this fictional Machiguenga tribe. then, is responsible comes to realize that the catalyst for this "creation" The reader ultimately the passions is the narrator's desire to understand of his friend Zuratas. The successive hablador narrative strains which in El coexist and interdependent are the result of the urgency with which the narrator hoped to

ultimately reconcile himself with all that is "lost" to him (Zuratas, the
oral culture, etc.). The primary force, the creator, of the Machiguenga, or Llosa. his narrative course, Vargas Yet, Vargas Llosa's creation, is, serves to create a fictive representation of someone he "actu narrator, and exists within, ally" (in the world of the novel) knew. One narrative as a can the kind of is dependent another?and on, continue, cycle literary each inlaid mise en ab?me. There exists a fracture, or a gulf, between each doll in a set of Russian narrative scheme (as there is space between nesting dolls), and, again, tion, or creation, emerge. it is in this abyss that problems of reconcilia

In theMachiguenga
progenitive named Pachakamue force. As could

lore of El hablador, the act of speaking is a

it, a certain man expresses ... to so many birth "by speaking, give In is the animals" culture, (132). language imagined Machiguenga a creative that allows it be both dangerous and invested with power a can It be it is of and tool misused; power agency. By mysterious. the ability to the projected Zuratas develops this language, appropriating the Mascante-hablador acquire culture. a kind (to birth) himself. He is realm of pens and paper and the beyond as long as there are tales that will last and ethnographers, anthropologists to to hear them. This is the tell them and Machiguenga people storytellers He, the teller of tales, tales that exists (of the novel) are a dying tribe. The and Christianity Peruvian civilization the the tribe and have altered their behavior. have already marked Yet, a The words, unbounded kind of immortality. tales retain by the shackles above the tribespeople, above the of pens and paper, can float suspended crisis though, for the Machiguenga insidious forces of Westernized such a potential for very Peruvian landscape. The narrator, by imagining to and his friend Zuratas lost words and orality, allows both language that each was denied within the parameters of privilege acquire a position can culture. All is erased?Zuratas Peruvian liminality as an accepted member of a tribe. The stories can also retain the locations. such usefulness By crafting they have lost in other cultural within the the narrator and oral for Zuratas text, spaces storytelling of "civilized" function allows in effect, to procreate. As Zuratas, in alternating recorded chapters, Zuratas in theMachiguenga is able to "breathe mythology out" a certain of power that he was in effect, is finally allowed denied to name in "civilized" Peruvian

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Absence, Language, Mario Llosa' Vargas

and Narrative s El hablador

Impossibility

in

17

kind of life merely ;he has by speaking. The narrator too has "procreated" a to text he had for so birth (the long-delayed story Machiguenga given a to text to This is him and is which write). belongs long intended controlled narrator in the space of his Machiguenga by him. Thus, to exist in Western culture in a way allows Zuratas the book, that he could

Machiguenga or more as a kind of memorial, to the point, a memory-text. emerges for the Zuratas of the While certain spaces of integrity may emerge was narrator the Zuratas that unable narrator's recognizes imagination, to function, or to be accepted, in the culture into which he was born. The the real Zuratas of the narrator's final gap in the text is the space between text. El who exists in and the Zuratas the memory pages of the narrator's hablador his is a memory-text whose purpose eludes the narrator himself,

not as the "real" person in college. the narrator knew of his "fellow" The narrator's Zuratas and rendering

and perhaps his inability to entirely tie his narrative together highlights
cannot be of the futility of such an attempt. Language ones cannot be balanced with oral written words oral words fused; (even a are to of written The desire created which by language). practitioner create an image of oneself in language (for both the narrator and his realization to invent a first "a desire of Zuratas), is, as Derrida posits, to that would be, rather, aprior-to-the-first language language destined to translate is attempting translate that memory" (61). The narrator that exists only in their that are not even his own, memories memories a language to suit them. absence and in his ability to create, somehow, The narrator tries to create a first language that joins both oral and rendering be a language that is (and transcends) both oral and a language, that when breathed both him (the out, creates written; narrator) and Zuratas. This would be the language of unity, that, if real, could fill in gaps, spaces, holes such a (within and beyond text). Yet, written. This would is only language tal, and perhaps to write attempt
Zuratas.

imaginary,

fictive,

not true. The narrator's in El hablador someone who

language struggling, the memory-text of

experimen demonstrates the ? is not himself

Zuratas of the narrator's memory will forever exist? on a parrot on scar a in and his and face with separated separation?with in his shoulder. This Zuratas is marked, the narrator's characterized, The Sa?l mind devices Peruvian and text in much culture. of social culture The Peruvian atic burden the same way he was characterized by the larger narrator is unable to avoid employing these same For the narrator, this is another problem and memory. While Zuratas in the suffered he was born because of certain marks on his

delimitation. into which

of reminiscence

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18

Latin

American

Literary

Review

body,

his ability to functionally join another culture with which he is in a new body; to him allows the narrator ultimately sympathy acquire allows him this. The body of the martyr may rise up in a new form, with a new means zation was of agency. "written." of The new body that the fictive face serves Zuratas develops of on

is dependent on his relinquishment of his former body on which civili

The scar on Zuratas's as an emblem the permanence marking, inscription, dependent a space of regeneration for Zuratas, the narrator of written Saul (ironically, language, allowing no own to in the narrator's suffer literary contrivance) longer due in a culture

writing. By envisioning the authority subverts only limitation

to his disfigurement. in a culture that kills its own Even or psychological a young, person with physical imperfect full-grown failings can subsist. The narrator is certain to point out that for the mature,

he might be, the disfigurement adult Zuratas, however of his exceptional to theMachiguenga. To them, he must have been born face is acceptable scar must have emerged later. He would have been killed at perfect?his birth if the scar had marred Zuratas himself him as a newborn. The narrator allows the to clarify this apparent discordance. He tells of and of the status of those who are imperfect. The his own disfigurement hablador Zuratas says, "Why didn't they kill me, with this face of mine, hablador

I asked them. They, too, laughed. How could [the imperfect] be children
of Kientibakori, pure; they were Were ! devils or monsters they born that way? They were born perfect. They'd become that way later... Only their outside is that of a monster; inside, they're still pure, no doubt about it" can be an In the system of Machiguenga then, Zuratas (212). logic, is "still member of the because tribe inside he pure." The accepted on his corporeal form reveals nothing of inner contamina "birthmark"

no message of impurity or imper tion; the facial discoloration conveys means in a culture in which fection. Such a scar, a marking, nothing means at The wine-colored mark his birth into appeared writing nothing. westernized immutable Peruvian culture As imperfection. can no longer be read?as this "birthmark" culture, Machiguenga written its evaporates. meaning Jacques Derrida's investigation sign, a kind of marginal and signified status, an anew within Zuratas births himself the a of

language and ownership, fromMonolinguism

here:

of the Other, is helpful

of language is the experience (or rather, before any the re-mark or the of the mark, the experience not makes what this articulation pos margin) precisely discourse, sible and necessary? Is that not what gives rise to this

For

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Absence, Language, Mario Llosa's Vargas

and Narrative El hablador

Impossibility

in

19

articulation versality,

between

transcendental

or ontological

uni

martyred notions of the mark thinking wounds dom inscribed

and the exemplary existence? While and

or testimonial evoking the re-mark

of singularity abstract apparently here, we are also at the expense of

of scars. Terror

and passion sense of these terms. And when the body

is practiced on the body. We speak here of martyr in the strict and quasi-etymological we mention of language

are naming

the body, we as well as and writing,

what makes them a thing of the body. (27)

If language and writing, then, are things of the body, by allowing Zuratas to relinquish writing in favor of orality, to the narrator enables Zuratas These wounds his these violent cultural "re-marks," body. relinquish no longer out of exclusionary and a certain lexicon, principles are no longer scars on Zuratas's matter?they body. to be denied the use to lose the ownership of language, For Derrida, born most is akin to experiencing the tongue" or "mother tongue," can form of physical violence. Zuratas's be experience was since Zuratas in thus: scarred, already physically taking interpreted on the forcible of himself from his mother tongue he even separation of one's "native traumatic

more This

an ownership of himself and a radical pronounces graphically a never to it. dissociation from mother wanted him to belong tongue that is one hablador. in El the textual absences reality that exists within staggering that this is a difficult cultural commen The narrator realizes thus the inlaid narratives severe attack on Peruvian allow the reader to detect that "civilization" and written

tary to articulate, there is a more culture at work

earns his livelihood as an here. While the narrator intellectual worker and aword-merchant, he recognizes, perhaps through the life of his friend Zuratas, that there are certain realms reconstituting in the culture in which he belongs that are absolutely One unforgiving. on the to suffer, languishing who is "unforgiven" (Zuratas) may continue or he may serve as his own agent-of-change. While there is no margins, concrete very name evidence that Zuratas a space does become the narrator envisions and become of inclusion aMachiguenga where Zuratas storyteller, can lose his

among many) despite "former" culture. The this name

one man among many merely his periodic use of intertextual can never Llosa's

(a single Tasurinchi references from his of of

tribe?any

"Machiguenga" tribe. Vargas to refer to a fictive

the realities approximate use incommensurable

"Machiguenga"

tribe that is not the "real" Machiguenga

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20

Latin

American

Literary

Review

illuminates

plexity "actual" Machiguenga manner. In some small Llosa connotes static, in effect his does

Llosa's realization Vargas to the indelible permanence

of

the resistance

of

tribal com

of print culture. He allows the an inbuilt resistance to being in this subsumed and significant ways, Zuratas does what Vargas need because to eschew with it. Zuratas writing/culture the keeps Machiguenga he dreams of living in a

not do. Zuratas's

preoccupation

imaginatively, new codes

operationally, because

community "free" of the strictures of limiting (delimiting) codes. Yet, he

imports Zuratas, of his unshakable or recall, the narrator's about slippage. anxiety a way to fix the still needs Zuratas, to him, to "fix" them through him). As the letter to the narrator, one must not let anger, "the order the narrator that reigns the world" and Zuratas's college one surely for order, because to fall apart and men to return to the god of good, and

Machiguenga real Zuratas

(to affix them wrote in an early

or effectively, compromise disarray, (14). In the same letter, written during years, Zuratas want wouldn't the original narrator's invokes

the necessity "life, through your fault, out of which chaos Tasurinchi,

Kientibakori, the god of evil, brought us by breathing us out" (15). The

on order. Through a philosophy of imagined Zuratas depends stasis, he aims to provide a bulwark against a fall back into "chaos." This, to the seeming is in striking contrast into which "chaos" significantly, his text to fall.

Vargas Llosa allows When nothing

ensues. is specific, surely a certain kind of vertigo is "normal," is the result of imposed Yet, when vagueness vertigo The culture of the narrator's and order. Machiguenga regimentation on of is non relies the Time flexibility language. imagination heavily names are non-existent. In such a culture, confusion personal specific; more space. This may abound, yet these absences engender interpretive as a "coherent" text. While is the paradigm the physical for El hablador of words novel may be bound by cardboard covers and may be composed can that such regimentation printed in ink on paper, there is only so much the control of cultural artifice. do. There will always be a space beyond The narrator of El hablador this?he may not have recog recognizes to the resounding yet he comes project, can become the actual. El hablador that the impossible is conclusion on s This narrative Llosa' commentary impossibility. Vargas melancholy nized it at the onset of his "narrative narratives, narrator composed haunting concerns not only written narratives, impossibility" more as well. Vargas cultural narratives but pervasive or oral Llosa' s

Mascarita

his Zuratas/Machiguenga tale in order to exorcise the demon from his soul: "[this] is what impelled me to

put it into writing in the hope that if I do so, itwill cease to haunt me"

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Absence, Language, Llosa's Mario Vargas

and Narrative El hablador

Impossibility

in

21

(244). adding (244). belong, fellow remain

The narrator what who

believes

that for Zuratas to what

impossible appeared The Zuratas of the narrator's deliberately

memory tried to remain unfettered and Peruvian

a storyteller was "becoming was merely improbable" was a man who could not by the biases of his citizens. He tried to

to ancestry. He attempted civilization and of Peruvian from the liberate himself constricting agenda from these oppressive life. In fleeing academic "regimes," Zuratas jumps The "real" his arms around a space of emptiness. into a void, wraps Zuratas but There exists not in the words between in the spaces is an abstract in "recording," succeeds in the spaces between chapters. and oral written where space language interpretive stretch towards each other, and a silent, autonomous that the narrator those words, is the silent space of El hablador, be translated, where memories the space in which cannot be reconsti

anthropologists, ethnologists, of his Jewish free from the influence

language no longer space remains. This words

simply cannot Even during their college there is no memory-text. years, tuted, where from different cultural registers, Zuratas and the narrator were speaking over the years. The them only widened and, indeed, the space between is of this failure and the realization his failure, narrator recognizes a final perhaps what allows him to close his tale. And of never being able to truly know. the absence absence resounds?

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

WORKS CITED
Acosta Cruz, Mar?a Isabel. "Writer-Speaker? Speaker-Writer? Narrative and Cul tural Intervention inMario Vargas Llosa's El hablador." INTI: Revista de 29-20 (Spring/Fall 1989): 133-145. Literatura Hisp?nica. Illuminations: Walter. Essays and Reflections. Trans. Harry Zohn. Ed. Benjamin, Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Booker, M. Keith. Vargas Llosa Among the Postmodernists. Gainesville: Univer sity Press of Florida, 1994. Castro-Klar?n, Sara. "Monuments and Scribes: El hablador Addresses Ethnogra phy." Structures of Power: Essay on Twentieth-Century Spanish-American Fiction. Ed. Terry J. Peavler and Peter Standish. Albany: State University of -. 1996. 41-57. Mario Vargas Llosa. South Carolina: University of South Understanding Carolina Press, 1990. Derrida, Jacques. Monolinguism of the Other or The Prosthesis of Origin. Trans. New York Press,

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22 Latin

American

Literary

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Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Temptation of the Word: The Novel of Mario Vargas Llosa. Vanderbilt University Press, 1998. Jean. The Story of the Storyteller: La t?a Julia y el escribidor, 0'Bryan-Knight, de Historia Mayta, and El hablador by Mario Vargas Llosa. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995. Vargas Llosa, Mario. El hablador. Barcelona: Seix Barrai, 1987. The Storyteller. Trans. Helen Lane. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Kristal, Efrain. Nashville:

Patrick Mensah.

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